NutWrench:The U.S. Embassy is uncharacteristically quiet, given the normal U.S. outrage over attacks on Americans working on foreign soil, from the killing this year of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others in Benghazi to the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico nearly 28 years ago.

The U.S. needs the help of the Mexican government to fight the War on (certain kinds of) Drugs™ and it wouldn't be helpful to publicly point out how thoroughly infiltrated the Federales are by the cartels.

I had never heard of this guy before so I looked him up on Wiki. Holy crap, the DEA later arrested the physician who kept Enrique alive so he could be tortured more. I thought that only happened in the movies...

Tat'dGreaser:Happy Hours: You know - what's amazing to me is the Benghazi consulate attack gets so much attention and yeah people were killed there and the tea party is trying to turn it into a political scandal, but it's just typical terrorism while this goes largely unexplained and while there were no deaths it's not like they didn't try to kill anyone - and it is largely ignored.

You do know an ambassador was killed in that attack right? Typical terrorism? What? Oh and if you notice there is a link to this story, in the news, which is always ignored. Cause we're not talking about it right now.

Yes, an ambassador was killed and so were several other people. It's not like an ambassador is king of the world or anything. That was typical Islamic terrorism. This attack in Mexico? I actually find that more disturbing - and yet the story is left to rot.

B-b-b-but nobody died!!! I don't care - the intent to kill people was still there.

Happy Hours:Yes, an ambassador was killed and so were several other people. It's not like an ambassador is king of the world or anything. That was typical Islamic terrorism. This attack in Mexico? I actually find that more disturbing - and yet the story is left to rot.

B-b-b-but nobody died!!! I don't care - the intent to kill people was still there.

The story just came out! You think the CIA is going to just let it go when two of their own where almost killed?

I'm sure what those agents did over there was all within the law and there was no reason at all to fire on them.

The Vienna Convention provides the guidelines for diplomatic relations. One of the stipulations is that the host nation is responsible for the security of foreign diplomats in their country. Understandably some countries are better at protecting diplomats than others, but if those individuals were embassy staff, then they are entitled to diplomatic protection.

It is very likely that they were "declared" officers or known to the Mexican Government, and that the attack was a direct result of cartel penetration of the Mexican Government.

I'm sure what those agents did over there was all within the law and there was no reason at all to fire on them.

The Vienna Convention provides the guidelines for diplomatic relations. One of the stipulations is that the host nation is responsible for the security of foreign diplomats in their country. Understandably some countries are better at protecting diplomats than others, but if those individuals were embassy staff, then they are entitled to diplomatic protection.

It is very likely that they were "declared" officers or known to the Mexican Government, and that the attack was a direct result of cartel penetration of the Mexican Government.

There are different flavors of diplomatic immunity. Some individuals are almost completely immune (although they are still subject to their own countries laws) while others are only immune with respect to actions taken in the course of their duties.

Some individuals exploit the hell out of the immunity. Diplomats are not usually the worst offenders (although some of them are terrible), it is more frequently the immediate family members of a diplomat who share his or her full immunity that are the worst.

Wait, wait, wait... the Mexican Federal Police Chief says they weren't following protocol? In the United States, that's pretty much the very worse thing any oversight board can say about a police officer.

I think the last time I remember that US officers were "not following protocol" was the New Orleans bridge shooting, when a group of plain clothes officers shot a bunch of unarmed people walking to the store, ran down the runners with their SUV, curb stomped the people lying on the ground, and then filed false police reports saying that they had been attacked by looters. Actually, I'm not even sure if those guys were "not following protocol"; it's possible they were (it is New Orleans, after all).

What I'm saying is that "not following protocol" appears to be police speak for "wow... even we can't possibly justify what these guys were doing." These guys are toast.

Happy Hours:my_cats_breath_smells_like_cat_food: I had never heard of this guy before so

Are you 12 years old or have you been living under a rock most of your life?

Dude, it infamous, but that happened almost 30 years ago. The only way anyone would have heard of it is if they were over 50, or had some specific reason to know about DEA lore.

For reference, for most people under 20, The Phantom Menace is the first Star Wars movie. Nobody under 30 has the slightest idea who JonBenet Ramsey is. Nobody under 40 has any idea who or what OJ Simpson was before his murder trial. Nobody under 50 is quite sure who Walter Mondale was, and they have never heard of Enrique Camarena.

Happy Hours:You know - what's amazing to me is the Benghazi consulate attack gets so much attention and yeah people were killed there and the tea party is trying to turn it into a political scandal, but it's just typical terrorism while this goes largely unexplained and while there were no deaths it's not like they didn't try to kill anyone - and it is largely ignored.

This meme, no doubt coming from ThinkProgress etc., that the only people that are suspicious of the official accounts of Benghazi are Tea Partiers is flat out wrong and an attempt to do pre-emptive damage control that really should have died off as soon as Obama's re-election was confirmed.

We already know that the official line given to the media was "Overzealous protestor...non-story" even as the government was aware that it was an act of terrorism (and come on, how could the murder of an American ambassador in Libya on the anniversary of September 11 be anything else?). We also know that the Obama administration was content to pretend like some whackjob's video had something to do with it and that Google was approached by rhe goverment to "reconsider" whether the video violated YouTube's ToS - an attempted First Amendment violation by proxy if ever there was one. In short, media coverage to date raises far more questions than it answers.

Here, we already have an Occam's Razor situation: the Mexican government is corrupt top-to-bottom, cartel-infiltrated, and some narco paid these cops off to fire on the vehicle and try to cover it up. There may well be more to the story than that, but there's no obvious contradictory evidence.

Happy Hours:The Larch: Dude, it infamous, but that happened almost 30 years ago. The only way anyone would have heard of it is if they were over 50, or had some specific reason to know about DEA lore.

Um, okay, well, I guess but the case lingered on well into the '90s as the US sent DEA agents into Mexico to flush out the killers.

I'm not even 50 and I don't really remember the killing, but I do remember the aftermath. It was a pretty big deal. Mexico wasn't exactly happy with the US over it.

That wasn't a very good explanation. The US "extradited" Camarena's murderer, but not through judicial or diplomatic means. We sent DEA agents into Mexico and they kidnapped him. I don't really blame Mexico for being a little upset about how that went down.

Dammitsomuch...I need more coffee. I have stupid typos/spelling errors in every greenlight I've had this morning...

/Mods or admins, feel free to fix it and save me the scorn of the Fark Grammar/Spelling Nazi's

Spoilsport! It's not nearly as much fun when the responsible party outs him/herself. Much more fun to gang-stomp an anonymous guilty party.

Still fun when we know who it is, mind...

And by the way, that headline doesn't make it sound like you need coffee. It sounds like you need much stronger medication than that.

I can't post pics from work...but imagine me posting the pic/rage comic with the guy raising his arm like he is going to make a counter argument, before lowering it upon realization that there was actually much truth in the original statement.

The Larch:Happy Hours: my_cats_breath_smells_like_cat_food: I had never heard of this guy before so

Are you 12 years old or have you been living under a rock most of your life?

Dude, it infamous, but that happened almost 30 years ago. The only way anyone would have heard of it is if they were over 50, or had some specific reason to know about DEA lore.

For reference, for most people under 20, The Phantom Menace is the first Star Wars movie. Nobody under 30 has the slightest idea who JonBenet Ramsey is. Nobody under 40 has any idea who or what OJ Simpson was before his murder trial. Nobody under 50 is quite sure who Walter Mondale was, and they have never heard of Enrique Camarena.

Welcome to old-ville, population us.

There are exceptions to the rule, but it's weird making references some people are too young to get.

On a side note, JBR's grave is down the street from my old place. There's all sorts of weird toys and such strung onto the branches over her grave, making it that much creepier.

"Commanders controlled by whom? Whose instructions were they following?" said one Mexican official with knowledge of the case.

Somebody pretty stupid, obviously... "Let's attack a US embassy vehicle with one of our own inside, make up a shaitty cover story and then have it all fall completely apart when nobody dies and even a cursory investigation shows that our cover story is about as durable as a Yugo.".

SN1987a goes boom:schief2: The bullet-proofed embassy SUV was chased under fire and struck by 152 bullets, 40 percent of them pumped into the driver and passenger-side windows after the vehicle had come to a stop.

The CIA officers didn't receive life-threatening wounds and the navy officer was unharmed.

That's.....kind of impressive.

Now I kinda want to find out who armored the car and give them a craftsman award. Good job guys.

I'm really curious about the armor. It absolutely astounds me that the people in that car managed to get away from that with minor injuries.

There was a tight group of about eight shots clustered on the driver side window, right about where I would expect the driver's head to be. This wasn't just 10 trigger happy cops guys discharging their sidearms in the general direction of an SUV driving by at 80 mph; this was something else. What hell kind of armored glass can withstand that kind of abuse, and what kind of weapon were the assailants using?

Maybe a good time to ripple a few GBU-27s 2000 lbs bombs on the Federal Police HQ.....just to let them know where we stand on this issue.Want the cartels to go away? Invade Mexico and let the USAF do some target practice with live ordinance.

The Larch:Happy Hours: my_cats_breath_smells_like_cat_food: I had never heard of this guy before so

Are you 12 years old or have you been living under a rock most of your life?

Dude, it infamous, but that happened almost 30 years ago. The only way anyone would have heard of it is if they were over 50, or had some specific reason to know about DEA lore.

For reference, for most people under 20, The Phantom Menace is the first Star Wars movie. Nobody under 30 has the slightest idea who JonBenet Ramsey is. Nobody under 40 has any idea who or what OJ Simpson was before his murder trial. Nobody under 50 is quite sure who Walter Mondale was, and they have never heard of Enrique Camarena.

I'm sure what those agents did over there was all within the law and there was no reason at all to fire on them.

The Vienna Convention provides the guidelines for diplomatic relations. One of the stipulations is that the host nation is responsible for the security of foreign diplomats in their country. Understandably some countries are better at protecting diplomats than others, but if those individuals were embassy staff, then they are entitled to diplomatic protection.

It is very likely that they were "declared" officers or known to the Mexican Government, and that the attack was a direct result of cartel penetration of the Mexican Government.

And it is not unusual at all for intelligence officers overseas who operate from embassies to be doing so under some sort of "cover" from the State Department (the KGB routinely had their Station chiefs at their US embassy posted as the First Secretary, i.e. senior non-Ambassador-level diplomat), so as to give them some level of protection from foreign prosecution should their agent networks get blown (i.e. they get "PNG'd" (declared persona non grata) and thrown out of the country rather than prosecuted as spies (and thereby preventing them from ever working overseas as a representative of the US in any capacity, as no country will willingly let a *known*, identified, intelligence officer inside their borders in any official capacity).

Happy Hours:Tat'dGreaser: Happy Hours: You know - what's amazing to me is the Benghazi consulate attack gets so much attention and yeah people were killed there and the tea party is trying to turn it into a political scandal, but it's just typical terrorism while this goes largely unexplained and while there were no deaths it's not like they didn't try to kill anyone - and it is largely ignored.

You do know an ambassador was killed in that attack right? Typical terrorism? What? Oh and if you notice there is a link to this story, in the news, which is always ignored. Cause we're not talking about it right now.

Yes, an ambassador was killed and so were several other people. It's not like an ambassador is king of the world or anything. That was typical Islamic terrorism. This attack in Mexico? I actually find that more disturbing - and yet the story is left to rot.

B-b-b-but nobody died!!! I don't care - the intent to kill people was still there.

Probably because this is typical Cartel terrorism. As opposed to typical Islamic terrorism.

mark12A:This is the culture that we seem quite happy to let stream across the border. Give it a few years, a few million more illegals, and this kind of crap will be happening all over Main Street USA.

By then, nothing less than a civil war will change it back.

I imagine that you like to angrily masturbate to the thought of the impending civil war...just the thought of forcefully taking the country back from all those socialist, queer loving liberals, and all those inferior brown shaded people gets your little Ted nugent standing at attention.You do know that the southwest and much of California were once part of Mexico...so the culture you fear has been deeply ingrained in these places since before the USA flew our flags over this land.Most of the people streaming across the border are hard working honest people just tying to make a go of it...the criminals don't need jobs in this country, they are getting filthy rich in Mexico selling blow to us gringos up north.You should really stop living in fear of brown people, they are no more or less bad than any other human on the planet, they are people just like everyone else...

The Larch:SN1987a goes boom: schief2: The bullet-proofed embassy SUV was chased under fire and struck by 152 bullets, 40 percent of them pumped into the driver and passenger-side windows after the vehicle had come to a stop.

The CIA officers didn't receive life-threatening wounds and the navy officer was unharmed.

That's.....kind of impressive.

Now I kinda want to find out who armored the car and give them a craftsman award. Good job guys.

I'm really curious about the armor. It absolutely astounds me that the people in that car managed to get away from that with minor injuries.

There was a tight group of about eight shots clustered on the driver side window, right about where I would expect the driver's head to be. This wasn't just 10 trigger happy cops guys discharging their sidearms in the general direction of an SUV driving by at 80 mph; this was something else. What hell kind of armored glass can withstand that kind of abuse, and what kind of weapon were the assailants using?

The Larch:I'm really curious about the armor. It absolutely astounds me that the people in that car managed to get away from that with minor injuries.

There was a tight group of about eight shots clustered on the driver side window, right about where I would expect the driver's head to be. This wasn't just 10 trigger happy cops guys discharging their sidearms in the general direction of an SUV driving by at 80 mph; this was something else. What hell kind of armored glass can withstand that kind of abuse, and what kind of weapon were the assailants using?

They were using rifles.

One of the companies that has had a few DoS contracts is Supreme Specialty Vehicles. Link

The companies and the various agencies that buy the vehicles are a bit hesitant to clarify what specifically is done to armor them. However, the doors and windows are heavily reinforced. The glass on that window is an inch and a half thick or more. That specific SUV was probably armored up to NIJ level 4 or 5.